Oosi rajas the need for the hour...

The government of india is way out spending its resource at its disposal on AIDS. People are more familiar with "pulli raja" than any other raja now. I feel it is an outright misplaced priority. HIV/AIDS affects .1% of the population. Well , i am not saying it should not be on the radar of the govt. What i am saying is it should be dethroned from its #1 position of govt. priority . Enough of pulli rajas on the prime time TV. Its time to put an end to this misplaced priority.


The awarness should be on targeted audience than this carpet bombing on the hapless citiznery. With the constant bombardment of pulli rajas even the corner tea shop guy knows that India ranks 2nd in the world in the number of AIDS patients. The stigma of cultural inferiority has been smeared on our face.

Every critic of our rich cultural heritage lampoons us with this un proved fact.


Now the WHO has revised its estimate on the number of people carrying HIV. It has down revised the number by, i think, more than 40% . This has not been communicated down to the hapless multitude.


Why is this a misplaced priority? When there are so many things to be done on the basic health infrastructure on a war footing , concentrating on this just to score some brownie points with some foreign charities is really deplorable.

This unnecassry thing on a war footing is causing lack of resources and coordination on even the basic health necassities. The following stats shows how misplaced the priority has been.Where is this country headed to?

Lets now look at some of the stats where there is a great detoriation due to misplced concentration of priorities.

========================================================

Year % for 3 doses of DPT vacc. % for DT booster

=======================================================
1990 100 81.4

1991 90.9 77.8

1992 90.6 77.8

...

.....

1998 90.1 60.8

=========================================================

Not only on diptheria but this awful trend continues on other diseases too. Measles immunization coverage is only 60-50%.

Immunisation coverage for non polio related diseases in Bihar is only 13 per cent, followed by Rajasthan with 19.7 per cent and UP at 26.7 per cent.

Various studies have implicated poor vaccination services and low awareness among parents as the major reasons for poor immuni-zation coverage(22-24,28,34-37).

where is the time and budget when the whole of the union health budget is geared on the creation of pulli raja advertisement. It is enough if the govt. concnetrates on the high risk group for this disease (the lorry drivers and sex workers) instead of bombarding us with pulli rajas in prime time. rather the govt. should be bombarding us with DPT and measles vaccine related "OOsi rajas".

Another question is why it takes a bill gates to open up research on dengue and other tropical disease. Instead of stooping too low to fly balloons made of condoms let the govt. get the priority straight. No more pulli rajas we need only oosi rajas.